Crossing a Line

Ted

Ted

The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
29,922
Display Name
Display name:
iFlyNothing
I think I'll go... there.

Moses2.jpg Moses1.jpg
 
Skip Miller said:
How was the ride? -Skip
Click to expand...

Couple light bumps, nothing worse. Of course, we went through the big hole where it was dry as opposed to through the black rain showers with lightning.

I've also found that the 414 takes turbulence very well.
 
If I can't go over or around it and there is room underneath, you know where I'm going.
 
If you can see through it...

That was before I flew an airplane with radar. Now I don't even need to see through it.
 
Everskyward said:
If you can see through it...

That was before I flew an airplane with radar. Now I don't even need to see through it.
Click to expand...

The 414 has radar. 1980s Collins vintage. I determined it to be inop, as it was painting absolutely nothing that day, so it will get removed to reduce weight as it's not worth fixing. A Duke went through that line at 16k at the same time we did (with working on-board radar as well as ADS-B download). We got up to 12k, watched all of the holes up high close up, and then dropped back down to 6k where we were able to find the hole pictured. If the radar was working and trustworthy, we would've used that to find an area to go through higher up.

I have a significant panel upgrade planned, but it will be a year or two before I get around to that. Budget, etc.
 
James_Dean said:
You missed out on a perfectly good chance to wash the plane. ;)
Click to expand...

Good point, I should've taken advantage of that. I'm sure my mechanic is going to point out that he gave me a perfectly clean airplane under a month ago, which is now really really dirty after 40 hours. ;)
 
Nice, looks like our showers today. Wait, no it doesn't. :) It is dark outside and I can't see more than 1/4 mile. We need rain, badly. Yay!
 
That thing has a strikefinder, right? How close did you get to the lightning? Were the tops over 30k?
 
James_Dean said:
That thing has a strikefinder, right? How close did you get to the lightning? Were the tops over 30k?
Click to expand...

Strikefinder is inop (also going to get trashed and eventually replaced with a WX-500), so we were running a Ted2000 Eye-Dar plus ADS-B WX on the iPad. Obviously, we were not going to use the ADS-B WX to penetrate the line.

We visually saw lightning in the dark stuff to the right in the picture. The stuff on the left was actually only moderate precip for a ways before it went back into red.

I'm not sure what the tops were on that system, but I doubt if they were over 30k in our area. They sure didn't look it. To the north, yes, most likely over 30k, but we were well away from that. Technically we probably could've climbed high enough to get above the system if we wanted to circle and spend enough time doing it, but it made more sense to just go under.
 
I've seen views like that hundreds of times navigating the southeast.

I think the main danger of being so close to building cumulonimbus is hail that can fall out of the anvil miles from the rain shafts. I've been lucky to date, but it can be a bit of a crap shoot.
 
Pilawt said:
I think the only place I'd be watching that weather is on the TV in the motel room. :eek:
Click to expand...

Storms are funny things, and I wouldn't suggest that people just go try to penetrate a storm because some long haired hippie flew through a hole about large enough to fit the 414 he was flying through.

While there can be concerns with proximity to the ugly stuff, storms are typically fairly binary - you're either in a bad spot or you aren't. Not much in between. Pick your spot well (which is pretty straightforward visually), and you're not in a bad one. That hole had no worse bumps than I've had going through a standard non-convective summer build-up that didn't even have enough precip to show up on radar. Hail is a concern, and for a rapidly changing system (like this one), the other concern is the hole closing up when you're in it. I'd tend to recommend an airspeed well below Vno and closer to Va because of that.

What you're flying matters. The 414 is one of the most stable IFR platforms I've flown, rivaling even the Navajo. It actually does better in turbulence than the Navajo in my opinion. Plus, its normal cruise speed is in the range of 150 KIAS the way I fly it (Vno of 210 KIAS), so you're in no area of structural concern. Of course, I would've still gone through that hole in the 310 if I was still flying it, but I would've had to pull the power back since it cruised near the top of the green.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Hail is a concern, and for a rapidly changing system (like this one), the other concern is the hole closing up when you're in it.
Click to expand...
My 172 has some slight dimples in the leading edges, from back when my dad had the airplane. He encountered hail while in good VFR, miles from a "widely-scattered" buildup in southern Oregon. And since a 172's speed is best described as a "dawdle", I worry about holes having plenty of time to close up before I get through. I guess what I'm saying is, my airplane isn't well-suited for that ... and I'm chicken. :)
 
Ted DuPuis said:
The 414 has radar. 1980s Collins vintage. I determined it to be inop, as it was painting absolutely nothing that day, so it will get removed to reduce weight as it's not worth fixing. A Duke went through that line at 16k at the same time we did (with working on-board radar as well as ADS-B download). We got up to 12k, watched all of the holes up high close up, and then dropped back down to 6k where we were able to find the hole pictured. If the radar was working and trustworthy, we would've used that to find an area to go through higher up.
Click to expand...
Without radar, I always preferred staying low where I could see the rain shafts. But most of my flying was in areas where there was good visibility, other than in rain.
 
Good thread...scattered T-storms are always an area of confusion for me as a 300 hr pilot w/ a few year old instrument rating. Excuse me while I pick the more experienced brains in here...

Everskyward said:
Without radar, I always preferred staying low where I could see the rain shafts. But most of my flying was in areas where there was good visibility, other than in rain.
Click to expand...

So if the there is a chance of scattered T-storms with an OVC layer below MEA and no pireps of the tops assuming you have no radar on board would you launch and hope to get above the layer, and if you couldn't then divert? Or would you not take off if that was the case?
 
neilw2 said:
Good thread...scattered T-storms are always an area of confusion for me as a 300 hr pilot w/ a few year old instrument rating. Excuse me while I pick the more experienced brains in here...



So if the there is a chance of scattered T-storms with an OVC layer below MEA and no pireps of the tops assuming you have no radar on board would you launch and hope to get above the layer, and if you couldn't then divert? Or would you not take off if that was the case?
Click to expand...
I would try to stay below the layer. Since I would stay VFR, the MEA wouldn't apply.
 
Pilawt said:
My 172 has some slight dimples in the leading edges, from back when my dad had the airplane. He encountered hail while in good VFR, miles from a "widely-scattered" buildup in southern Oregon. And since a 172's speed is best described as a "dawdle", I worry about holes having plenty of time to close up before I get through. I guess what I'm saying is, my airplane isn't well-suited for that ... and I'm chicken. :)
Click to expand...

I'd agree that the 172 isn't well suited to it. And nothing wrong with being chicken. :)
 
My wife is currently stuck in New York because the airlines apparently won't go through that! Maybe they should fly their planes down at 12k ft and look out the window like you did! ;)
 
Was that avoiding a cell or actually weaving through a line? Hard to tell.
 
Dav8or said:
My wife is currently stuck in New York because the airlines apparently won't go through that! Maybe they should fly their planes down at 12k ft and look out the window like you did! ;)
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt if this particular line caused your wife to be delayed in New York. Regardless, they go through holes like this on a daily basis, although typically higher. I sent those pictures to a friend who flies Dash 8s. He responded "That's been my view every flight the past couple months."

Kritchlow said:
Was that avoiding a cell or actually weaving through a line? Hard to tell.
Click to expand...

It was a line that stretched roughly from St Louis down to the Texas/New Mexico border. That was just a hole in the line. There were a number of holes, with many other planes crossing the line - some even squawking 1200.
 
A flight, commercial, maybe 6-7 years ago turned out to be one of my favorites. I had a window seat, flying west, near sunset/dusk, on a summer day with a lot of convection over a wide area. From my vantage point I could see the CB across the horizon, and watch and feel us weave around to maintain plenty of miles of clearance. It was actually pretty cool to watch. I can't remember as it got darker if I was able to see the inter-cloud lightning or not. But I do remember seeing the towering cumulus lit up in the different colors of the sunset, and watching us gently pick our way through.
 
I was on this ORD-PHX flight last year:

ORD-PHX%2Btrack.jpg
 
Jeff reminded me of this flight my wife was on a couple years ago, DEN -> MCI:

Screenshot_2014-08-06-21-02-57.png
 
BillTIZ said:
Had a hole like that close the curtains about the time I got into the middle. The heavens just opened up and poured.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the risk involved with going through a hole like that. The line was very thin at that point, so the actual crossing of the line took no more than a minute or so once we got to it, which minimized the risk.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top